PKNY Closes, and NYC Loses a Tiki Bar

Opened in May 2010, and originally called, “Painkiller,” the tiki bar, PKNY, in lower East Side is closing its doors. Named one of the best bars in America, it is not a bar that simply did not have a regular crowd, it lost its lease.

Don’t get too sad yet. You still might be able to get your Scorpion Bowls and Mai Tais in another location. One of the owners, Richard Boccato, has plans to put a more modern twist on the tiki bar elsewhere, possibly in Brooklyn or Queens. The Asphalt Jungle, named after the 1950’s film noir, will also be a tiki bar, but not just a copy of the style of PKNY. Boccato intends to make the Asphalt Jungle a “more classic, mid-20th-century representation of a tiki bar.”

Hopefully the Asphalt Jungle will have an easier first year than the original location. Losing the “Painkiller” identity after a lawsuit in 2011, resulting in several protests, the tiki bar had to change its name. PKNY was short-lived.